


Binding

by Decepticonsensual



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: It's better if Harry doesn't know exactly what his best friend did to ensure his victory.  (It's better if Hermione doesn't let herself realise that she doesn't hate it as much as she should.)





	Binding

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Suggestive content, as well as the use of sex as ritual/sacrifice and issues around that.

Thirteen years had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts, and the final destruction of what had become of the man who had once been Tom Riddle.

Or so the world thought.

Hermione Granger let herself in the cemetery gate, and paused - one foot planted on the pavement outside while the other hovered above the damp grass.

Thirteen years.  Thirteen Halloweens.  She was a senior Ministry official now, a wife and mother.  A revered veteran of the Order of the Phoenix, and part of what the tabloids had taken to calling the Generation of Heroes.  All that was true, while she stood on this side of the wrought-iron fence.  Once she entered the graveyard, she knew, the real world would melt away behind her.

Hermione hadn’t discovered the truth right away.  In the aftermath of battle, it had only seemed natural that Voldemort’s presence still seemed to haunt those who’d fought.  After all, he’d been the monster under their beds for years, if not for their entire lives.  If it was difficult to believe he was gone, surely that was understandable.  And when Harry had started looking hollow-eyed, had complained of nightmares in the months that followed… well, he was little different from the rest of them, in that.

It was only when months turned into years, and the nightmares turned into waking visions that set Harry’s scar ablaze with pain, that Hermione turned to her books for an answer.  There, she found that what Voldemort had done to Harry – to put a piece of one’s soul inside another – was not wholly without precedent.  And it was not without price.  The horcrux may be gone, but the connection between the two souls would not entirely sever until both had passed on.  As long as Harry lived, some remnant of Voldemort would linger, too.

However, such a remnant could be contained, rendered harmless and kept within the bounds of the graveyard by a simple ritual, renewed annually.  It was old magic – blood and seed, not Latin incantations – but it would work.

Hermione had never told Harry.  How could she look into those exhausted eyes and say that his war wasn’t over yet?  That it would never be over, as long as he drew breath?  Instead, Hermione had used her books and her cleverness, and had simply… dealt with the problem, as she always had.  Harry didn’t know why his nightmares had stopped, but he’d finally emerged from the pale husk he’d become, and he’d been able to live a life.  That was what mattered.

And no one knew where Hermione went every Halloween.

She let her foot touch the graveyard soil, and the world grew quiet around her.

The air inside the old Gaunt monument was cool and dry.  As Hermione tugged at the corner of a loose stone in the wall, she felt that familiar thrill, like a cool finger down her spine.  It was the same feeling she got cracking open a new book, or stepping off her broom in a new place – or the first night that she and Ron…

She hated that she felt it  _here_ , of all places.  And yet.

She drew out the small stash of items concealed behind the stone:  a book, a branch, a vial of ash. A sudden gust of wind caressed the back of her neck, sloppily, as if the air of the tomb were excited, too.

Halfway through the first incantation, she felt the clawed fingers trailing up over her shoulder.  Air became fabric and flesh as it wrapped around her. Scaled skin, rough and curiously warm, rubbed against her cheek.

“Mine,” a high, cold voice whispered without breath.

“For tonight,” Hermione replied, twining their fingers together and raking their joined hands slowly down the front of her robes.


End file.
